


Washed Ashore

by Neurofancier



Series: Kickthestickz stories [1]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: M/M, mermaid au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-15
Updated: 2016-05-15
Packaged: 2018-06-08 13:32:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6857035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neurofancier/pseuds/Neurofancier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>"Are you offering to take me away?"</p>
  <p>"If you ask me to."</p>
</blockquote>One cold winter evening, he meets a strange man by the sea.<p>Mermaid AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	Washed Ashore

**Author's Note:**

> Prompter asked for a mermaid AU. I ran with it.

The beach was completely deserted. Chris pulled up the collar of his coat to protect himself from the biting wind. The air was thick with the taste of salt, and so cold that he could feel his nose reddening. The sand crunched under his boots as he walked along the shoreline. 

A seagull called over his head. He lifted his head to watch it fly, following her path with his eyes. The bird soared and then fell, landing on the ground next to a man Chris was sure hadn't been standing there a few minutes ago.

The newcomer was tall and thin, with legs that seemed to go on for miles. He moved with a strange gait, lifting his knees almost to his chest with every step. It made Chris think of a flamingo, or maybe some other big bird unused to walking on land. For several minutes, Chris watched him from a distance, moving in circles in his strange little walk. Then, abruptly, the man stopped. He turned to face Chris, completely expressionless.

Something about that made Chris feel uneasy. He shivered, wrapping his coat tighter around himself, turned around, and started to leave. When he shot a look back over his shoulder five minutes later, the man was still standing in the same spot. Even though he was so far away Chris couldn't see his features, he was sure that the man was still staring at him.

-

The sea was so dark it was almost dark grey. This time, Chris had remembered to bring his navy blue scarf. 

The man from last time was in the same spot Chris had last seen him. He was sitting with his long legs crossed, one arm stretched and a seagull perched on his skinny wrist. Chris considered turning on his heels and going back home. He had almost made his mind up to do it, when the man turned his head and looked at him. Something about the man's gaze compelled him to keep walking toward him.

When he reached him, the man was focusing his attention on the seagull once again. He seemed so intent on watching the bird that Chris was sure he would ignore him. But when he was only a few feet away, the man said, “It's not Monday.”

Chris stopped, startled that the man was talking to him at all. “I-- No, it's not.”

The man turned his head and looked at him. It was the first time Chris was close enough to him to see his eyes. They were a perplexing shade of green-blue, so light they seemed almost transparent in the overcast light. 

“You only come here on Mondays,” the man said, startling Chris out of his contemplation.

Chris straightened up, taken aback. “How do you know that?”

The man tilted his head. “I live nearby. I see you walking down this beach every Monday.” 

He spoke in a stilted manner, as if he didn't speak English too well, Chris noticed. A foreigner, maybe? The man definitely didn't look like he was from around here, with his golden skin and dark hair.

“You see me? Like, from your window?” Chris asked.

A smile appeared on the man's face, quick as camera's flash. The man looked at him with an intensity that felt like a physical touch. 

“Yes. From my window.”

“Oh.” Chris shuffled his feet. “Do you come here everyday?” he asked, trying to fill the silence.

“No. What is your name?” the man asked him abruptly.

Chris blinked. “Chris?” This whole conversation was one of the strangest he had ever had.

“Chris,” the man repeated, as if pronouncing the word for the first time.

“What's your name?” Chris asked him.

The man shook his arm, prompting the seagull that had been perching on it to fly away. Chris had almost forgotten the bird had been there at all. It was hard to focus on anything else with this strange man in front of him.

“PJ,” the man said after a while.

“PJ?” Chris repeated.

“Yes.” The man gave him that same oddly bright smile. “That is my name.”

“Pleased to meet you, PJ,” Chris cleared his throat. “I should probably get going.”

PJ nodded, a wide, expansive gesture. “I will see you around.”

As Chris opened the door of his house half an hour later, he thought about how PJ's words hadn't felt like a mere pleasantly.

-

The next time he saw PJ he was sitting on a rock, his back straight and his neck stretched out. It was the kind of posture someone would adopt to look at something over their heads, but PJ was watching the ocean instead. Chris stopped by him.

“Hey,” he greeted the man, feeling awkward.

“It's not Monday today, either,” the man said, seemingly to the sea.

“I felt like going for a walk,” Chris explained. 

He had an odd sensation, as if he should be asking for permission to be there. As if this beach was PJ's. It was ridiculous, but he still felt oddly relieved when PJ said, “I am glad you're here.”

He was still looking at the sea. Chris stretched out his neck, putting his hand over his eyes to shield them. “What are looking at?”

PJ turned and crouched down. His long legs made him look like a frog perching on a green leaf, preparing to leap. Their heads where at the same height now. 

“There's a full moon in two days,” PJ said. “It affects the tide.”

“Oh.” Chris couldn't see any difference, but the earnestness in PJ's face made him want to be able to notice it.

PJ sat back down to watch the sea, and they stood side by side, watching the waves roll by.

-

“I usually stay away from the beach on weekends, and I don't come down here during summer at all.” Chris picked up another pebble and threw it at the sea.

“Yes,” PJ nodded sharply. “I saw that.”

Chris felt his chest growing warmer, as it always did when PJ mentioned that he had seen him from his window. It was a heady thought, to think that maybe he had been existing in PJ's thoughts since long before Chris had even known him.

PJ was sitting on the sand, his long legs stretched out and his toes pointing straight at the sky. There was always something slightly strange about the way he moved or sat or stood, as if he wasn't fully familiar with the way his body should work and every gesture had to be carefully orchestrated.

Chris had asked him about it, once, on the sixth time they had seen each other. PJ had gone quiet for a while, like he sometimes did. He had been quiet for so long that Chris had started to regret having asked it, and then he had said, “I couldn't walk, before.”

It made sense. His odd manners, the stilted way he sometimes talked... Chris could imagine him stuck in a wheelchair, isolated from everyone, looking outside his window and daydreaming about what it'd be like to live like the people he'd see on the beach. Maybe he had watched Chris, then, just as lonely as he had been, and dreamt of making friends with him, being part of his world.

“It's way too crowded, you know?” Chris continued explaining, “All the tourists with their kids and their dogs... I come to the beach to think, not to have fucking beach balls thrown at me while some married couple has a shouting match over who forgot the sunscreen.” Chris made a face of distaste. “So noisy.”

“I suppose.” PJ's shoulders jerked into a shrug, like a bird's wings flapping to take off. “It's noisier back home.”

Chris picked up another pebble and tossed it from hand to hand. “Is it?”

“Yes. Sometimes you can't hear yourself think over the roar.” PJ's too wide smile didn't waver.

Chris rubbed the back of his neck. “I'm sorry. My... my dad was also the shouting kind.”

PJ leaned forward. “Is that why you moved here?”

Chris threw the pebble at the sea. “I guess. I never thought of it that way but... Yes. I was essentially running away from home. I mean, I could have been a fucking bartender-slash-failed-actor anywhere in the world, you know? I didn't have to move across the country.”

PJ laid back down on the sand. “What if you could get farther away from him?”

Chris frowned. “What, you mean like move to America?”

PJ shook his head. He was getting sand all over his curls, but as always, he didn't seem to care. “No. Farther still.” 

Chris stuck his hands in his pockets. The waves grasped at the shore like fingers reaching for the two of them.

“I don't know.” Chris looked back at PJ over his shoulder. The other man was stretched out on the sand, long limbs spread. He looked like something dragged out of the depths of the sea and washed ashore. Chris blinked and shook his head. “Are you offering to take me away?”

PJ's teeth where as white as the inside of a shell when he smiled. “If you ask me to.”

Chris shifted his weight from one leg to the other. “Maybe I will, one day.”

-

“I don't understand,” PJ said, blue-green eyes wide open. “Why is it so important that she sells seashells by the seashore?”

“It's not.” Chris put another shell in the bucket. “It's a tongue twister.” PJ didn't seem any less confused. “I mean, it's supposed to be difficult to say it.”

“It is,” PJ agreed slowly. “Wouldn't that make you less likely to want to say it?”

Chris shook his head. “No, it's... it's supposed to be like a challenge?”

“Oh.” Understanding dawned on PJ's face. “Like trying to swim faster than anyone else. Like a competition.”

“Yes, exactly!” Chris grinned. “Now you get it.”

The last time he had seen PJ, he had been picking up shells and trying to carry them in his arms without dropping them, so this time Chris had brought with him a red plastic bucket. PJ had looked at it as if it was the first time he had seen one, but once Chris had explained what they were going to use it for, he had been delighted. 

He was always struck by how sheltered PJ's life had been. PJ's family, he had explained once, didn't let him go out much. Chris thought it was so unfair that someone as marvellous as PJ had been forced to stay at home simply because he was wheelchair-bound.

On the other hand, Chris had a hard time imagining PJ at the pub where he worked, or buying groceries. There was something about PJ that made him look unreal, like the afterimage of a dream that might dissolve if he turned on his bedroom's light. He felt like if he were to take PJ by the wrist and drag him into town, he'd disappear before they reached the pier.

-

“Earth to Chris. Chris, do you copy?” Dan waved a hand in front of Chris' face.

Chris blinked, startled. 

“Sorry, you were saying?” He pulled away from the bar and started arranging bottles on the shelf. 

He was supposed to be cleaning up the pub in preparation for the evening's crowd. Instead he had spent the last thirty minutes distractedly wiping the same ten square inches of the bar with a grimy wet rag. He had been thinking about PJ. The day before he had gotten up so early it had still been dark outside, and he had gone to the spot of the beach where they always met. They had sat together, and PJ had told him about what he thought the bottom of the sea was like, and then the sun had come out and Chris had gotten to watch PJ's face illuminated by the dawn light.

Dan arched an eyebrow at him, expression worried. “I've been telling you that Phil and I are going on a date tomorrow. Hey, is everything okay? You've been acting a bit strange lately.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure,” Chris was quick to say. He threw an empty bottle on the bin and turned around to face Dan. “Just a lot in my mind, I guess.”

Dan chewed on his own bottom lip. “Look, I know Phil and I haven't been very good friends lately... We didn't mean to get so wrapped up in each other, it just sort of happened...”

“What?” Chris shook his head, genuinely surprised. “What are you talking about?”

Dan seemed a bit put off. “Uh... You know, about how we haven't been hanging out much lately?”

“We... haven't?” They had been, hadn't they? He tried to remember the last time they had hung out together. There had been that house party a couple months ago, back before he had met PJ, and then after...

What had he done after that?

“Chris, mate, are you sure you're alright?” Dan asked, his frown deepening.

“Yeah. Of course.” Chris wiped at an imaginary stain with the rag.

“Do you... do you want to come watch the movie with us tomorrow?” Dan asked tentatively. Chris could hear the pity in his voice. It made his blood run cold.

“What, throwing a bone at your single friend, are you,” he said, voice dripping sarcasm. “How kind of you.”

Dan shook his head. “No! I'm just saying... We should hang out.”

“Well that's too bad.” Chris picked up the wet rag and threw it at the sink. It landed there with a wet 'plop'. “Because as it happens, I have plans tomorrow.”

“Oh.” Dan fiddled with his bangs. “Maybe another time then.”

Chris nodded curtly at him. Dan pushed himself off the bar and went back to mopping the floor.

Chris set out to wash all their shot glasses. He didn't need Dan's pity. He didn't need anyone's pity.

Plus, he really did have plans. He didn't want to miss his daily meeting with PJ.

-

“How long have you lived here for?” Chris had asked PJ once. “I've been coming to this beach for months, and I've never seen you before.”

“Oh, I've always lived here,” PJ had said with a shrug of his sharp shoulders. “But I only started coming to this beach recently.”

“Really?” Chris had frowned. “Why?”

PJ had stayed silent for a few seconds. “I saw something I wanted,” he had said finally, enunciating each word carefully.

Chris had arched his eyebrows. “What was it?”

PJ had smiled that toothy smile of his.

-

It had been raining all day, and it looked like it might start raining again soon. Chris had forgotten his umbrella that day when he had gone to work. He shouldn't be going to the beach in this weather. He doubted PJ would be in his usual spot. What kind of lunatic went to the beach when it was raining? He should just go straight home.

When he reached the place where they usually saw each other, PJ was barefoot on the sand, the sea washing up to his ankles. He hadn't even cuffed his skinny jeans, and the bottom of them were soaked through.

“PJ?” Chris called out for him. The sea was troubled that evening, and he didn't want to come any closer to it.

PJ's face when he turned around looked as if he had just woken up from a trance. “Chris!” he said, sounding delighted.

“What the hell are you doing? Come back here! You'll get a cold!” Chris yelled, trying to make himself heard over the sound of the wind.

PJ stayed where he was, completely motionless.

“PJ, please!” Chris shivered under his coat. Dark clouds were rolling in, and this coat didn't even have a hood. “Come on, man, it's like minus five degrees out here! Go home!”

PJ watched the sea. “I can't go home. Not yet,” he said. He wasn't screaming, yet Chris could hear him perfectly. “The roar...”

Chris felt queasy. He thought of his dad's quick anger, of the silences that were worse than the screaming, of all the times he had wished he had somewhere to run to.

“Come back to mine, then!” Chris said, raising his voice to make himself heard.

PJ lifted his chin, frowning as in confusion. “Would you invite me into your home?”

“Yes!” Chris nodded. “Come on, come with me! I'll put a kettle on.”

PJ walked out of the sea, lifting his knees in that way he did.

“Where did your shoes go?” Chris asked him. PJ shrugged. “Shit, nevermind. It's going to start raining. I'll let you borrow a pair back at mine.”

He turned to go back home and PJ followed him. 

Chris' house was about two miles away from there. It was a tiny cottage that he had shared with about five different people in the last two years. Right now he was living alone, though, his last housemate having moved away three months ago.

“Sorry about the smell,” Chris said, unlocking the door. “A fisherman used to live here. I've tried to air it out, but it doesn't matter how long I keep the windows open for, it still stinks like fucking fish.”

PJ followed him inside the house. “It's fine. It reminds me of home.”

Chris arched an eyebrow. “Was your father a fisherman?”

PJ stayed silent for a few seconds before replying, “Something like that. Yes.”

“I heard they are out in the high sea most of the year. Must have been lonely.” Chris hung his coat and took off his scarf.

PJ lowered his head. “It was.”

Chris felt a knot form in his throat. He hated that he had put that look in PJ's face. He swallowed. “Your clothes are soaked. I'll go get you some dry ones,” he announced, and went inside his bedroom.

PJ and him were about the same height, so he picked a pair of pajama bottoms and a t-shirt and went back to the living room where he had left PJ.

The clothes Chris had picked fell to the floor. PJ was standing there, fully naked. 

Drops of water slid down his body. His golden skin was smooth and hairless. His wrists and ankles were thin, almost delicate, yet his shoulders were strong and powerful. PJ always looked otherworldly under the muted winter light, with the sea roaring next to him and the wind moving his curls. Here, standing in Chris' cramped, untidy cottage, he looked just as alien. 

PJ turned to look at him. He crossed the distance between them slowly, as if the storm and the cold and the whole world could wait for him to reach his destination. His blue-green eyes looked at Chris' face as if seeking something and then he smiled, wild and triumphant and fey. A shudder ran down Chris spine and he opened his mouth to say – something, he didn't know what – but then PJ pressed their lips together. Chris groaned and buried his fingers in his wet curls to deepen the kiss.

Eyes closed, mouths sealed together, PJ walked him backwards toward his own room. He fell on the bed and PJ's light weight covered him. His skin tasted like saltwater. PJ took off his clothes and moved above him, rubbing their bodies together. Everything happened so fast that Chris felt disoriented, like a drowning man fighting against the tide to keep his head above the water. He tried to grasp at PJ, tried to find solid footing on his arms and his shoulders, but PJ kept moving, slipping between his fingers like wet sand.

When his orgasm came it hit him by surprise and left him gasping for breath, drenched to the bone in sweat, muscles aching with aftershocks. PJ stayed on top of him, those impossible blue-green eyes drinking him in with an intensity that left Chris feeling stripped raw. 

PJ was still fully naked, his skin unmarked on all the points where Chris' nails had sunk into it, and in that instant something clicked into place.

“What are you?” he asked, like a frightened child learning their imaginary friend had turned real.

PJ grinned and kissed him like he was trying to suck the breath right out of him. Chris tried to resist, tried to will himself to stop this long enough to get his answer, but ultimately he could only surrender as PJ took him between his lips and engulfed him.

At some point hours later, while Chris panted in delirious pleasure, PJ whispered a question into his ear.

And Chris, exhausted and crazed and wrung out, said, “Yes,” said, “Anything,” said, “Yes, take me with you.”

-

Chris woke up the following morning feeling sore. The rain and wind were beating on his closed window. His sheets were cold. There was no sign of PJ anywhere in the house, but he knew what he had to do.

He put on a t-shirt and jeans. He put his shoes on without socks. Without even a hoodie to shelter himself from the rain, he left the tiny fisherman cottage and walked toward the shore.

The sea lapped at his ankles, dragging him in, and he let it.

The sky was dark grey. The ocean might have been blue-green, on a different day. His jeans became stiff and heavy as he kept walking forward – until the freezing water reached his knees, his waist, his neck. A wave crashed over his head and the saltwater stung his eyes. He closed them tight and kept walking until his feet stopped reaching the ground. Then he swam, toward the tide sucking him further and further away from the coast.

His shoulders stung with exertion. His legs grew tired. He kept moving forward until he couldn't anymore, and then he struggled to stay afloat until his body gave in.

That's when the waves swallowed him in.

The current took him down and he sunk deeper and deeper. He couldn't hear anything over the roar of the waves, couldn't think. Something brushed against his arm. He opened his eyes and caught sight of something just out of reach. Something not at all human.

Panicking, Chris tried to swim up, but he was too exhausted to. The need to breathe had his heart hammering a sharp staccato against his chest.

The thing looked at him with his head tilted. His blue-green eyes were so light they were almost transparent. Chris gasped, in surprise and in recognition, and accidentally swallowed a mouthful of water. He coughed and choked, gagging as the salt stung the back of his throat, his vision narrowing down and darkening. 

The thing stood floating where it was, watching him calmly.

“I came for you.” Chris tried to say as his lungs flooded. “Help me!”

The thing looked at him with his blue-green eyes and smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a [tumblr](http://neurofancier.tumblr.com/), if you're into that.


End file.
